Intense and exciting … Robert Hayward as Scarpia and Giselle Allen as Tosca in Opera North’s production of Tosca.
Photograph: Richard H Smith

Edward Dick’s provocative, if quirky new production of Tosca for Opera North relocates Puccini’s political thriller from Rome during the Napoleonic wars to an unnamed present-day country in which church and state collude as forces of reaction. Dick is acutely aware that the opera maps on to the concerns of our own times – the printed programme contains photographs of a Five Star Movement rally in Rome and Donald Trump standing, head bowed, in front of a wooden cross. The staging alludes, too, both to the emergence of the new far right and the abusive sexuality that has resulted in #MeToo.

Tom Scutt’s set is dominated by a vast gilded cupola, modelled on Rome’s Pantheon, for which Cavaradossi (Rafael Rojas) has supplied a fresco of Mary Magdalene, who gazes heavenwards, her eyes turned away from the human mess beneath. Clerics and thugs scuttle about in the surrounding darkness, though the sudden glare of arc lights reminds us that this a world in which no one can keep anything hidden for long. The Te Deum, at which Robert Hayward’s Scarpia receives a cardinal’s blessing, is as much a flag-waving political rally as a religious ceremony. The second act, meanwhile, takes place in Scarpia’s bedroom, where he coldly forces Giselle Allen’s Tosca to watch Cavaradossi’s torture relayed by webcam to his laptop, before launching his assault on her.

Swivels between charm and brutality … Robert Hayward as Scarpia with the chorus of Opera North. Photograph: Richard H Smith

The production’s real strengths, though, lie in Dick’s understanding of the psychological dynamics between the protagonists, and in its three exceptionally fine central performances. Allen wonderfully captures the vulnerability that lurks beneath Tosca’s self-dramatising temperament, while Hayward can be genuinely frightening in his depiction of Scarpia’s sanctimonious hypocrisy and sadism. Their confrontations, as he swivels between charm and brutality in an attempt to break down her resistance, have an in-your-face intensity that makes them extremely disturbing. Rojas’s ardent Cavaradossi convinces both as lover and free-thinker. Conductor Antony Hermus, meanwhile, ratchets the tension up almost to breaking point and doesn’t let go. It’s compelling stuff, disquieting, creepy and exciting in equal measure.